Brutal Job Market for Teens

posted by KTRH's Nik Rajkovic
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2 years ago

If your son or daughter is having trouble finding a summer job, they're not alone.

A new study shows only one in four teens between 16 and 19 has a job these days.That's half the number just a decade ago.

The difference is they're facing stiff competition from laid off adults forced to take lesser paying jobs.

“In a normal scenario these jobs aren't really wanted, but because we're coming out of a recession I still think there's a lot of people out there working two jobs, so these types of jobs are going away,” says financial strategist Clark Hodges.

He tells KTRH News that now is a good time to teach kids to be aggressive in the job market, not to sit around home and wait for a position to open.

“You don't get a job behind a computer screen and you don't get a job by filling out an application,” says Hodges.“You need to go in and say 'hey, so and so sent me down here, he said you guys might have some work, I'm a good friend of his and I'd like to see what you have available.'”

That's where networking comes in – a lesson that sometimes its who you know, not what you know.

“There's people that you know that have some sort of relationship with some job out there that maybe can introduce you to some person so you come in recommended,” says Hodges.